Enough already, the book is better

The sci-fi thriller Ender's Game, based on the 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card, is already in theaters this month, and Catching Fire, the middle child of Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy, will be coming out closer to Thanksgiving.

Having already seen Ender's Game and enough Catching Fire previews to fill in the edges, I can say both of these are going to be action-packed, adrenaline-fueled thrill rides totally worth the price of admission. Even so, if you have not read the books, you will be missing SO MUCH!

Ender's Game the movie was a huge disappointment to many fans of the book, some of whom have been waiting since it was first published (zomg, 28 years ago!) to see it on the big screen.

To quote one fan, "The battle scenes were great, but all the parts that made the book brilliant are missing."

The absolute worst example of this in recent memory is how the big screen treated Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief, the first book of what is now a 10-book series. Readers know Percy Jackson is the best thing that happened to books since Harry Potter. Movie goers have no clue, however, since the first movie (2010) totally ruined serious plot points of the series, including key relationships between characters, and almost destroyed the chance of the other books being made into films.

No doubt, movies are amazing. A hundred years of research has taught us that nothing quite gets into the human brain like moving pictures. They can inform us, let us escape reality, and, in both good and bad ways, convince us the world is different than it really is.

But books have their own power. When you read a book, you have your own idea what a character looks like, how he or she talks, how they move. More than that, books can present ideas in a way movies just can't. You might have watched Inception, and you might think screenwriter Christopher Nolan is brilliant, but until you read a book, you never have the actual experience of taking an idea so far into your head that you think it's your own.

There are always movies coming out that are based on books. Next year's Divergent, based on the series by Veronica Roth, and James Dashner's The Maze Runner, promise post-apocalyptic fun, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is also be in theaters this month, and then there are all the adult movies based on books, such as 12 Years a Slave, a true story also in theaters this month.

Have fun, watch a great movie, but if the story stirs you, don't forget the books are almost always better.